


Another Reason to Keep Living

by Lyrishadow



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 09:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18407741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrishadow/pseuds/Lyrishadow
Summary: Tae is what she is, she doesn't recall a time when she wasn't fighting to survive. Dumped on the streets of Corellia at 8 years old, armed with two heavy pistols and a savvy knack for being in the wrong places, and piloting swoop bikes, she manages to make it to 13 years of age when a terrible accident takes the sight from her left eye. A secret benefactor pays for upmarket cybernetics, and Tae has no idea who it might be - so she resumes her life, earning a name for being a good shot, and reliable gun. No-one any the wiser on her damaged eye.Then a guy named Braden tells her she should join in The Great Hunt in his team.How will she earn the loyalty of her crew when she isn't even sure of herself? Can her failed sight be truly corrected with cybernetics or is that just another reason to survive?





	Another Reason to Keep Living

**Author's Note:**

> I have this as a work in progress. Starting with this piece on meeting Mako.  
> I have not written a long piece in a while, so with some idea of how it will all pan out, I am starting again. This Bounty Hunter is an actual PowerTech I have on Star Forge. As always, I take liberties with the conversations in the game and use those to inspire and make my own story. Please enjoy this and the next chapters to come.

The trip to Hutta was more than boring; it was fortunately not a long one from Nar Shaddaa but it gave Tae time to think a little. Tae had been born on Corellia, right in the heart of the Republic core worlds. So she figured the Republic did not care about her - didn’t care about orphan kids unless they were Force-sensitive, that she had spent years alone on the streets of the main city on Corellia just went to prove that. As far as a background she could tell anyone she didn’t have any kind of stories to share. Thrust into the world at 8 years old, she had survived, barely, and then they had installed her cybernetics to compensate when she had been hurt piloting in swoop races...  
She was good at what she did, she knew that, but when people started asking questions about her past she avoided the topic of her parents. She had skill, knowledge, and ability and that was enough for people to know to hire her.  
Her mother had died soon after she was born and her father had abandoned her when she turned 8. The guns she had now, she had been given for that birthday before he disappeared; they were not a kid-sized gun by any means, and she had taught herself to use one - no 8-year-old could have handled the weight and pushback of the two of them; As she got older she favored putting her other skills on the offhand - electro net, fire blaster, and shield.  
She kept quiet for good reason. The cybernetics she had were not really street value- they had cost a silent sponsor a pretty penny; she had gone blind in her left eye in an accident when she was 13. She had never found out her sponsor no matter how hard she had searched so fewer things unexplained to people the better.  
Tae walked into the room at the Poison Pit cantina as she had been instructed when she had talked to Braden back on Nar Shaddaa, she had gone there between jobs, hoping to pick up a lead to something better than the work she had been doing as an enforcer for some low-level crime boss. Braden had approached her and told her that he had watched her work. It always came as a surprise to Tae that anyone even noticed her; she worked quietly, quickly and never spoke about a job out of place. A sense of code, if not honor in all the killing she did.  
“Hey now …” A girl standing by a console pressing here and there on buttons, Tae could have figured out what but it had never been her thing, she had enough tech in her head to work for her but that was it not her interest. The girl however turned and Tae raised an eyebrow at the sight of the amount of tech she wore, good quality and expensive, had to be top secret. Interesting.  
“Hey now indeed!” Braden stood a wide grin on his face he was taller than Tae by a head. Quickly she had to decide how she would appear to the two others in the room. Cocky but not too over the top, smart but not too smart; all an act, like every day of her life, had been until then.  
“Well met.” She nodded to the two as Braden introduced them. Mako, the technical genius he “picked up on Nar Shaddaa” and Jory, the muscle.  
“Let’s get to work,” Tae spoke as she took a firm stance to hear the plans they had - to make her a big shot hunter, and get her in with a Hutt who could sponsor her for the Great Hunt.  
She did the leg work leaving the rest to be the brains of the outfit. Find her target, take her target’s tags as proof. Easily enough done when the target was a cocky thief from Corellia, she knew what kind of game even if she was hardly going to state she had once lived there. She knew that there is nothing a Corellian won’t do if they are skilled in it - fight, pilot, and even card games came to mind. This kid - he was younger than she was, and definitely from a middle-class family of some kind, had made his mark robbing Imperial pay shipments. Applauded by Republic no doubt, but it made him a wanted man on any other planet, and Tae was nothing if not efficient in her work. In fact, she considered this was doing the galaxy a favor in removing an idiot. If you wanted to be a successful criminal, Vex, you should not leave your travel itinerary around the place. She shook her head and pocketed his tags.

Back at the cantina, her mind on something mundane like lunch she paused a moment by the bar to order something to eat.  
“Outta the way big shot.” some guy muttered as he pushed past her  
Without thinking too much she walked back into the room Braden had secured for them.  
“Hey I..” she started, then stopped her heart sinking as she realized on the ground, and very dead were the two men. Casting a glance around she was half relieved to see Mako was not with them.  
“Braden… Jory…?” Mako was a few seconds behind her, long enough for Tae to be in the middle of the room when the girl entered.  
“Sorry..” Tae shook her head.  
“Wait… you…you did this...”  
“If I was going to kill them, I would have killed you too.” Tae said her tone just a little above scathing “Look, I'm sorry... I don’t know what happened…”  
“The camera must have caught something,” Mako replied, seeming to come to her senses. “Damn someone tampered with them.”  
Still a few minutes later a holorecording played of the scene just before Tae returned. She clenched her fist as she recognized one of them as someone who had pushed past her out in the bar.  
“Taro Blood…?” Was this guy for real? Did he think he could throw the hunt before it has evens started?  
“Big shot Mandalorian, from Alderann.” Mako muttered “Lying ..cheating ..scum…”  
“I’m sorry Mako.” Tae shook her head, she hadn’t signed on with Braden to see him die like this.  
“I didn’t know them well but I’d like to be there to see them buried.”  
“I will… sort that out. We can’t give up now. Braden worked hard to get you in with the Hutt, all we have to do is prove our case and take that sponsorship.”  
“The best way to get back at this Taro is to win.” Tae pointed out “Think we can?”  
“I’m with you… “ Mako nodded “Let’s do what we need to.”  
“Let me know if you find anything else ok?”

Tae made her mark on Hutta, told a few lies to get through, pretending to be doing everything the slimy Hutt needed of her. Finally, she felt she had done enough.  
“Sponsor me,” she said as the Hutt asked what she wanted after he had tricked her into killing his beastmaster.  
“That sponsorship has already gone to another fearsome hunter…” Nemro the Hutt laughed “If you find him, you may take it from him.”  
“I am not done with you Nemro…” Tae was angry with the Hutt but she knew better than to push it, someday revenge would come - if not by her hand then by the hand of someone else he had played - it was a terrible way to do business.  
“I know everything…” Mako met her in the alcove after she had spoken o the paymaster; Tae saw immediately that Mako wanted something from her - figures, she was more or less in a swamp without a speeder and had no way to say no to the girl.  
“I want to join you...I think I could be good at the groundwork… and shooting things.. I’ve been practicing and…”  
Tae considered her options. Leaving Mako behind in a room was not going to make her feel comfortable not after the crap that Blood and cronies had already pulled. It made more sense that the two of them could do better together than Tae would manage on her own. Plus Mako had that slicing skill of hers which could only come in handy.  
“Sure.” she nodded at the girl “lets go….”  
Mako had kept talking almost pleading before she realized Tae had said yes.  
“Alright. Let's go get our token.” Mako relaxed a little.

They retrieved the token from the Trandoshan’s cold dead hands - and freed a Republic scientist who was wanted for some reason. Poor thing was terrified of everything, so they sent her to the spaceport to take a shuttle off the planet. Hoping she made it ok, Mako handed her a hold out blaster. Once they confirmed with the Hutt and officials from the Great Hunt who had been looking into the behavior of Taro Blood; they were on a shuttle to the Imperial homeworld of Dromund Kaas.

“So we have some time.”Mako started cautiously looking at Tae who was sitting in the small cabin making sure her gun and armor were clean.  
“Sure just a bit though, will want to get some sleep on our way.” Tae nodded at the two bunks.  
Ïmperials kept their shuttles in good order, she had to admit, this was a one up from the one she took to Hutta a few days ago.  
“So… tell me about yourself? Braden didn’t say much.” Mako asked innocently.  
“Braden didn’t know much.” Tae suggested calmly, “let's not do the past stuff ok?”  
Maklo looked visibly defeated.  
“Look, it’s enough to know I am good at what I do, and I have your back.” Tae finished with her gun reassembly and turned to her armor. “Knowing where I came from isn’t going to improve on that; I don't have a family you gotta call if I die.”  
“No-one?”Mako seemed surprised.  
“No one,” Tae repeated, “Sorry, not one for taking up the present with the past.”  
The remainder of the trip to Dromund Kaas was mundane, Mako was happily talking about news she had heard on the holo-net, and Tae was happy to nod and smile at the girl, talk about guns, or tech but the subject of a family did not reappear.


End file.
